Global Automaker: Redesign + System
The final direction selected by the client would inform all future digital products for Lincoln’s Design System
Role: Designer
Magic+Might Team: 3 creative directors, 2 product designers, 2 contract designers
Methods: Competitor analysis, sketching, wireframes, mood boards, visual design, prototyping, animation
Project Tools: Sketch, Powerpoint, Monday
Competitor Analysis + Mood boarding
In our initial audit, we identified competitors in the luxury automotive space and compared their design language to seven key thematic areas. We could then determine the greatest amount of value and tailor a Design System to Lincoln’s specific needs.
We then began the diligent process of mood boarding across our established thematic spectrum to better understand visual opportunities of interest
Each territory was plotted along a simple brand spectrum, from “Designed from Heritage” to “Designed for Modernity.”
An array of UI exploration based on the themes established was created
We used a menu as a base for expression to navigate iconography, color scheme, and typeface options.
Below you will find more screens we built to establish the validity of each concept
The vehicle’s infotainment system can have many screens including a cluster (behind wheel) and a center console (secondary display).
This project ran over the course of over several months.
A hybrid emerged “Constellation”, which is currently being unrolled in their 2020 vehicles.
For our client, we went beyond designing and evolving their system. We then helped manage and maintain their UI Sketch libraries for 2020-22 Navigator and Nautilus.
This included building complex UI Kits, ground-up, for Ford UX teams to thoroughly use for development.
For every program, components had to be recycled. This included detaching previous attributes to reattribute them from a new library.
There are a lot of nuances, so a critical eye and the foresight to understand the project scope is important.
The System
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Backgrounds
To help establish a light (day) and dark (night) mode we established gradients that expressed moments in a day. These were later made into motion for a more ambient environment.
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Type System
A typeface alone can help define a brand. For Lincoln, helping expand Century Gothic’s hierarchy in app was vital in the initial build.
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Color Nuance
Color became a complex yet integral component due to having modes and matrix standards.
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Atomic Components
We could not change many system components as the primary go was re-skin oriented . We did help establish recognizable states though.
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Molecule Components
Our task is complete when in-house teams can manipulate or scale the system with ease.
We continued to expand the design system over several vehicle permutations
and screen sizes
This included Nautilus and Navigator 20-23’ systems.
After the production release, our team continued conceptual exploration to expand the systems brand avatar and voice automation system (“Digital Assistant”)
We iterated many alternatives – below was the direction I specifically helped validate. This work would inform NextGen Cluster project.
